The Hunting Party: Critic Reviews

I left feeling a bit uncomfortable, but the fact that Shepard gets away with it at all is a testament to his talent.

The Hunting Party is a misfired, misguided would-be satire set in postwar Bosnia.

...The Hunting Party still is a movie worth chasing down.

A forgettable contribution to all those movies about tormented, gonzo newsmen, stranded in some hellish outpost (in this case, Bosnia), who drink to drown those terrible memories but are committed to news, news, news.

When something seems too bizarre to be true, that's generally how it plays onscreen.

Like many of the best movies about war and its lingering echo, The Hunting Party is full of dark humor.

The opening credit disclaimer for writer-director Richard Shepard's The Hunting Party -- 'Only the most ridiculous parts of this story are true' -- didn't help me much. Everything about this political thriller is ridiculous.

...it does make room for the latest, loose-screw character part in the reinvention of Gere's career.

As they say, the difference between movies and real life is that real life does not have to make sense. And that is what it takes to make crazy times real to us in a way that the truth cannot convey.

If the director traffics in the realm of black comedy, any attempts to win us over or encourage sympathy or empathy with the rollicking hell-raisers on screen tend to give off a bad odor.

The action plot is lousy with cliched suspense scenes of back-road executions halted at the last possible instant.

...The Hunting Party derives much of its tension from watching seemingly 'normal' people doing seriously insane stuff.

On paper, there's no way that The Hunting Party should work. But onscreen, it defies the odds.

Alternately glib, superficial and amusing, pic vainly attempts to absorb some degree of Serbian irony into a story that's unavoidably lessened by its privileged American vantage point.

The film comes off more like a drunken recollection by a war correspondent than something that might actually have happened.

The Hunting Party is a not dark enough, not comic enough dark comedy about the aftermath of the Serbo-Bosnian War.

Politics aside, The Hunting Party is a breezy, occasionally bumpy ride that ultimately becomes a satisfying journey.

A sour, disenchanted war comedy that affects a breezy style, The Hunting Party was originally called Spring Break in Bosnia.

Unfortunately, Shepard's approach takes the movie into Jason Bourne territory and away from the black comedy he seemingly wants to make, making the film fall between the cracks in terms of boxoffice appeal.

[Director] Shepard strikes just the right absurd, satirical tone until near the end, when he allows the film to wrap up a bit too conveniently.

The biggest problem with the movie is the tone, which is by turns preachy, silly, mawkish and dark.

Features some truly outrageous events.... But filmmaker Shepard struggles to avoid action and comedy cliches

Adorns its bankrupt inanity in the robes of Importance

There are a lot of movies that don't deliver on their promise. The Hunting Party is one of them. It's a disheartening disappointment.